San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/elections/page/5/)
RESULTS: Recalled: School board members Collins, López and Faauuga. Elected: Assessor-Recorder Torres. Runoff: Assembly candidates Haney and Campos, beating Mahmood and Selby. See story. This is a nonpartisan analysis of contests on the ballot in San Francisco, for the special election occurring on Feb.
This interview is part of our February 2022 election guide. The Public Press and “Civic” are only publishing highlights from interviews with candidates on our audio platforms, but we are making extended transcripts available to add context. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.
Sylvie Sturm
Can you recap for me? How has your experience been in your very first election campaign that you’ve been going through?
Joaquín Torres
It’s been it’s been pretty amazing to be a first-time citywide candidate and being able to reconnect with so many communities, so many neighborhoods, so many old friends who I’ve been serving in one role or another throughout my time since I started public service back in December of 2009.
Sylvie Sturm
Why are you running for this office in particular?
Joaquín Torres
Well, I I’ve been looking for another way to serve. I started my career in public service and neighborhood services and really tried to learn the foundation of local government city service work from that perspective of: What is the front desk like of constituent services?
This is a transcript of an interview with “Civic” host Laura Wenus and school board member Faauga Moliga, part of our February 2022 nonpartisan election guide. Though “Civic” will broadcast only nine minutes of each commissioner’s interview to give each equal airtime on our program, we are making transcripts of the full conversations available. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.
Faauuga Moliga is a Samoan Pacific Islander who arrived in San Francisco when he was a year old and grew up in public housing. As a member of the San Francisco Board of Education, he is the first Pacific Islander to hold an elected seat in the city. He was elected in November 2018.
Laura Wenus
So, at the time of this recording, San Francisco is seeing a huge spike in coronavirus cases.
This is a transcript of an interview with “Civic” host Laura Wenus and school board member Gabriela López, part of our February 2022 nonpartisan election guide.Though “Civic” will broadcast only nine minutes of each commissioner’s interview to give each equal airtime on our program, we are making transcripts of the full conversations available. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.
Gabriela López was elected as a member of San Francisco’s Board of Education in November 2018. She is an elementary school teacher for bilingual fourth- and fifth-grade students and an adjunct instructor for students seeking their master’s degrees in education or their teacher credentials.
Laura Wenus
So, a lot of the issues that we are seeing today, I think are worth talking about, because they’re likely to persist. For example, we are in a massive spike of COVID cases right now. I think we’re still seeing a seven-day average of case rates of more than 1,000 cases a day, which is record-breaking.
This is a transcript of an interview with “Civic” host Laura Wenus and school board member Alison Collins, part of our February 2022 nonpartisan election guide.Though “Civic” will broadcast only nine minutes of each commissioner’s interview to give each equal airtime on our program, we are making transcripts of the full conversations available. These transcripts have been edited for clarity.
Alison Collins was elected to the Board of Education in November 2018.
Laura Wenus
I’ve been asking everybody about the coronavirus situation, just because of this huge record-breaking spike in cases that we just saw, it seems that wave has thankfully crested. But it does seem that we haven’t seen the end of COVID in general, and that it is inevitably going to affect school safety practices.
San Francisco residents who are not citizens but are parents may vote in school board elections, including the upcoming recall election that could remove three members of the board. The Board of Supervisors in October made this enfranchisement, originally enacted through a 2016 ballot measure and scheduled to sunset in 2022, permanent.
In an interview with “Civic,” Evangelina Peña, co-manager of the outreach division at the San Francisco Department of Elections, walked voters through the steps, from ensuring they receive a ballot to filling it out to tracking its processing status online.
San Francisco schools and their leaders have been in the spotlight recently for a variety of controversies. Some parents have pushed for schools to reopen sooner. A member of the school board is suing the district. An effort to recall some board members is underway. And an initiative to rename certain schools has come under fire.
Redistricting, the process by which electoral districts are drawn, will happen locally as well as at the state and federal levels. San Francisco will use census and resident input to redraw its supervisorial districts, a process that begins this year and will likely carry on into 2022. Alison Goh, president of the League of Women Voters of San Francisco, explained to “Civic” how the process will work and outlined the transparency and outreach the League wants to see from the city.
Recent corruption scandals at City Hall highlight the need for good-government reforms, especially after efforts to create a public advocate’s office failed in July 2020. “It was a lost opportunity,” said David Campos, former supervisor and current chief of staff for District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The measure benefitted from precedents set in cities across the country that were similarly wracked by graft and mismanagement, including Detroit, Chicago and New York.
